LAST UPDATED: Updated on February 14, 2018. Previous November 1, 2017; April 29, 2016 (originally posted on June 28, 2015) (Detailed discussion on Europe and the rest of the world can be found in Dr. Lott’s new book, The War on Guns. Some other information on Europe is available here):
Post: After the Charleston massacre, President Obama made this comment: “the unique mayhem that gun violence afflicts upon this nation.” Of course, regarding mass public shootings, Obama doesn’t need to look any further than France, which last year suffered 532 casualties (killings and woundings) versus 527 in the US during the first seven full years of the Obama administration from 2009 through January 2017.
But this isn’t a problem limited to France and the US. While most numbers look at shootings where 4 or more people have been killed, smaller attacks are very hard to track in places such as Africa or Southern Asia or parts of South America, which have murder rates 8 or 10 times higher than the rate in the US. Even some of these large mass shootings in Africa only received a couple news stories.
While this post will focus on mass public shootings, attacks really take many different forms and in the rest of the world vehicle and bombing attacks are clearly more frequent.
Our list of the worst mass public shootings collected cases where at least 15 were killed has been updated through January 15, 2017. Since 1970, all of the 20 worst mass public shootings occurred outside the US. Muslims also committed 18 of the worst 20 mass public shootings in the world. All 20 of the worst mass public shootings occurred outside the US, and that was also true for 40 of the worst 44. It is possible that we are still missing even some of these large mass public shootings prior to 2000, but any of the ones being missed are outside of the US, Canada, the Commonwealth countries, and Europe.

The terrorist attacks by Al-Shabaab in Kenya, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Lashkar-e-Taiba in India, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Pakistan are the same as the ISIS attacks in France. They are the same regarding the weapons used, the number of attackers, and the choice of targets. All of those countries define these as Islamic terrorist attacks, not battles over national sovereignty. Thus far the US has been lucky that the Orlando, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, and Chattanooga, Tennessee terrorists simply haven’t yet been on the same scale nor have any of them used the machine guns used in these attacks abroad.
Mass shootings were excluded if they were part of a war over sovereignty or ones done by the government. If one were to include these cases, the list would include many more attacks in such places as the UK, Israel, the Phillippines, and Russia. In the case of Russia, I excluded five shootings that were part of the Russian-Chechen conflict. The most deadly was the Beslan School siege of September 1, 2004, which left 385 dead and another 783 wounded. The other cases for Russia are listed at the end.
Deaths from mass public shootings where at least 15 people have been killed (1970 through February 14, 2018)
Africa, Australia, Israel, and the Philippines all have much higher per capita death rates from these large mass public shooters than the US. Indeed, even Europe’s rate for all countries whose borders are within Europe is 20% higher than the US’s. By contrast, the per capita rates in India and Pakistan are fairly similar to that in the US. Indeed the death rate in the US is only about 7% higher than in India and Pakistan. The US makes up about 4.4% of the world of the population (322.8m/7.411b) and accounts for 4.1% of the deaths from these attacks.
The attacks have apparently been increasing over time, though part of that is the explosion in Africa from 2012 on. Since 2012, 83% of all the mass public shoot where at least 15 people have died have occurred in Africa. Prior to 2012, such attacks in Africa reportedly made up zero percent of the attacks. Given the little news coverage given to recent mass shootings in Africa, it raises the possibility that we are simply missing earlier attacks in Africa.
As the bombings in Brussels (35 dead) Pakistan (over 70 dead) over the last week have illustrated, there are many ways to kill people. A comparable number of people died in either of those attacks as the most deadly mass public shooting in the US (49 dead).
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